In the first
years of his compositional life, 1811-1819, Rossini composed
and presented a total of thirty operas. Like Bach, Haydn
and others before him he re-cycled some music between these
operas. He also wrote major revisions to several of them
for different theatres providing happy endings to tragedies
for example. It was a hectic creative pace. By comparison
Rossini’s last ten operas were written over a more leisurely
nine years with three of these works being major revisions
in French of earlier Italian operas.

In 1828 when
he began composing Guillaume Tell, Rossini was 36 years
old and following the death of Beethoven he was the world’s
best-known composer. It was his 39th and last
opera despite his living until his 76th year.
As Director of the Paris Théâtre Italien Rossini had a guaranteed
annuity for life. In addition to this basic financial security
he had earned considerable sums at the 1822 Vienna Rossini
Festival presented by Domenico Barbaja, the impresario who
had originally invited the composer to Naples and who presented
six of his operas between February and July. On his visit
to London the following year Rossini himself presented eight
of his operas and sang duets with the king. His marriage
to his long-term mistress, Isabella Colbran, also brought
a considerable dowry after she inherited property. With
good counsel from banker friends Rossini had enough money
to live in style. Many have speculated that given his liking
for social activities he saw no reason to continue the strained
and hectic life he had perforce been leading. There was
also the question of his mental resilience and physical
state. Certainly his marriage was not successful and he
and Colbran went their separate ways. In the 1830s his chronic
gonorrhoea was a major health problem to him, exacerbated
by frequent, and futile, stringent treatments.

Whilst Rossini
had hinted at possible retirement during the composition
of Guillaume Tell the work shows no signs of waning musical
creativity, or capacity and concern for detail. It is by
far his longest opera, a complete performance lasting nearly
four hours. He took excessive care over its libretto, casting
and composition. The opera is based on Schiller’s last completed
drama of 1804. Rossini’s first choice of librettist was
Eugène Scribe (who had provided the text for his previous
opera Le Comte Ory) who preferred other subjects.
Rossini then turned to the academic Victor-Joseph Étienne,
librettist of Spontini’s La Vestale, and who had
transformed the libretto of the Naples opera Mose in
Egitto (5th March 1818) into the French Moïse
et Pharon premiered at the Paris Opéra on 26th
March 1827. He presented Rossini with a four-act libretto
of seven hundred verses! Appalled, Rossini then called on
the youger Hippolyte-Louis-Florent Bis who reduced the work
to more manageable proportions and re-wrote the critical
second act. Finally Rossini asked Armand Marrast to recast
the vital section at the end of act 2 where the representatives
of the three Cantons assemble and agree to revolt against
the tyranny of Governor Gesler (CD 2 tr. 8). This is a scene
that draws from Rossini some of his most memorable music
in an opera of much melodic and dramatic felicity.

Rossini was
also worried about the cast. In Le Comte Ory the
soprano Lare Cinti had had a considerable success as Countess
Adele and the composer had her in mind when he wrote the
role of Mathilde in Tell. But she was pregnant and
the proposed substitute was booed in another production.
The premiere of Tell was postponed and Rossini had
even more time to put the finishing touches to the work,
which opened at the Opéra on August 3rd 1829.
The tessitura of the role of Arnold gave the scheduled tenor
Nouritt difficulties and after the premiere he started to
omit the great act 4 aria Asile héréditaire and its
cabaletta (CD 3 tr. 9). Soon further reductions and mutilations
were inflicted. Within a year it was presented in three
abbreviated acts and then act 2 only was given as a curtain-raiser
to ballet performances. An often reproduced anecdote relates
how Rossini met the director of the Opéra on the street
who told him they were going to perform act 2 of Tell
that night, to which Rossini was supposed to have replied
‘What the whole of it?’

The opera was
first presented in Italian translation at Lucca in 1831
and the San Carlo in Naples in 1833. On record the Italian
version with Pavarotti and Mirella Freni under Chailly recorded
in 1978 (Decca) has vied with en EMI recording of 1973 with
Gedda and Caballé under Gardelli’s less frenetic baton.
Both recordings are recommendable featuring as they do a
full text and tenors with good upward extensions. Pavarotti
who later had a disc entitled ‘King of the High Cs’ declined
to make his La Scala debut as Arnold claiming it would ruin
his voice. A tenor friend of James Joyce is quoted as reporting
that the role of Arnold required 456 Gs, 93 A flats, 54
B flats, 15 Bs, 19Cs and 2 C sharps. I cannot vouch for
the accuracy of that estimate but certainly the role demands
an ability to rise up the stave with full tone and dramatic
intensity on a regular basis.

In this performance
Giuseppe Sabbatini’s tightly focused, but ever musical and
tastefully phrased tenor, meets the demands of the high
notes if not quite having the heft and robust tone the role
ideally requires in its most dramatic moments. I would not
wish to damn his performance with faint praise because his
efforts are always musical, in good French, and deserve
the applause of the appreciative audience. As his lover,
Mathilde - who he decides to forsake after the murder of
his father - Nancy Gustafson sings with light tone adequate
variety of colour and plenty of expression, but without
the lightness and flexibility that would convince me that
hers is the voice Rossini had in mind for the role. She
lacks the ideal legato to caress the phrases in her aria
Sombre foret, desert triste (CD 2 tr. 3) but rises
well to the expressive demands and tessitura of the following
love duet with Arnold when she confesses her feelings for
him and he departs to win fresh laurels on the field of
battle. The arrival of Tell and Walter Furst leads to a
great trio when they accuse Arnold of being a traitor to
the cause of Swiss freedom and then reveal that Gesler has
murdered his father (CD 2 tr. 7). This dramatic trio when
Arnold realises his duty and joins the rebels is, together
with the finale that follows (CD 2 tr. 8), the musical and
dramatic crux of the opera. Rossini, with his keen and experienced
sense of theatre, fully realised this and hence his particular
concern about the dramatic tautness of the libretto at this
point; his music matches the intensity of the prose. Few,
if any, pages of opera match that level of dramatic intensity
and melodic invention until Verdi’s Nabucco. No wonder
Donizetti is reputed to have attributed the rest of Guillaume
Tell to Rossini but act 2 to God!

Act 2 demands
more dramatic singing from Tell himself than act 1. Thomas
Hampson’s lyric baritone of earlier years had grown considerably,
with his assaying of Verdi roles and the like whilst in
Sois immobile et vers la terre he can still invest
tenderness in a phrase as he prepares to split the apple
on his son’s head (CD 3 tr. 7). If he has lost a little
of his earlier flexibility it is more than compensated for
in the weight of tone and heft he brings to the dramatic
act 2 trio and the confrontation with Gesler (CD 3 trs.
4-6). His French, unlike some of the comprimario parts is
idiomatic. As important as the soloists in this opera is
the chorus. In his operas for Naples in particular, Rossini
honed his ability to use the chorus as a central character
in the drama. In Guillaume Tell that process reaches
its full flowering musically and dramatically with much
of the opera revolving round magnificent choral ensembles.
Its apotheosis is to be found in the finale to act 2 (part
of CD 2 tr. 8) when the chorus represent the men of the
three Swiss Cantons, each characterised musically, are called
together to plan the revolt. Philip Gossett, the renowned
Rossini scholar, suggests (Masters of Italian Opera, The
New Grove, 1983) that his is the greatest single scene Rossini
ever wrote. The Vienna chorus are as vital and vibrant at
this point as they are appropriate in expressing the pastoral
mood of act 1.

From the opening
cello chords of the famous overture (CD 1 tr. 1) to the
opera’s climactic conclusion (including the storm music,
a Rossini speciality, Tell’s killing of Gesler and the general
rejoicing (CD 3 tr. 11), Fabio Luisi’s pacing ideally reflects
the many facets of the work. Inevitably, in a live performance,
applause intrudes to disturb the dramatic continuity, but
it is not excessive. The recording gives prominence to the
orchestra with the voices set slightly further back as one
might experience a performance in the theatre as distinct
from a studio recording. At 193 minutes it is missing around
40 minutes compared with the studio recordings of the complete
work previously mentioned. But this must be seen in comparison
with the Cetra recording of 1951, re-issued by Warner Fonit,
of 166 minutes. That mono recording is graced by the mellifluous
tone of Giuseppe Taddei as the eponymous hero.

The accompanying
booklet gives a track-related synopsis and an essay on the
opera with comments on the Vienna production, the first
in French for the famous theatre. I enjoyed the fluency
and vibrancy of this live performance without the distractions
of Davis Pountney’s typically quirky production and sets.
It might be abbreviated, but what remains is blended into
a cohesive and meaningful dramatic whole, which is more
than can be said for some of the butchering the work received
in Rossini’s lifetime. Well worth investigating.

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